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MeritCare Named One of Nations Top 100 Heart Hospitals

MeritCare Heart Center has once again been named one of the nation's 100 top cardiovascular hospitals. This is the sixth time in seven years that the center has received this prestigious recognition from Solucient, an independent industry expert. MeritCare is the only hospital in North Dakota and South Dakota on the list.

6th time MeritCare Heart Center has received honor

Only hospital on list from North Dakota and South Dakota

MeritCare Heart Center has once again been named one of the nation's 100 top cardiovascular hospitals. This is the sixth time in seven years that the center has received this prestigious recognition from Solucient, an independent industry expert. MeritCare is the only hospital in North Dakota and South Dakota on the list. MeritCare's Heart Center has the largest team of heart specialists in the region treating over 6,000 patients per year:

15 board-certified/board-eligible cardiologists, with specialists in interventional cardiology and electrophysiology

3 board-certified cardiovascular surgeons

1 board-certified pediatric cardiologist

10 physician assistants and nurse practitioners

The 2005 Solucient 100 Top Hospitals®: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success study appeared in the Oct. 31 edition of Modern Healthcare magazine. This study is presented by Solucient, an Evanston, Ill.-based information company serving the health care industry. It is the market leader in providing tools and vital insights that health care managers use to improve the performance of their organizations. Solucient's expertise and proven solutions enable providers, payers and pharmaceutical companies to drive business growth, manage costs and deliver high quality care.

Each hospital in the study group was assigned to one of three comparison groups and was analyzed in seven areas. Within the comparison groups, hospitals were ranked on the basis of their performance on each of the seven areas relative to other hospitals within their group.

For patients who receive care at a 100 top hospital, key findings include:

If cardiovascular services in all acute-care hospitals performed at the same level as the hospitals with the nation's top cardiovascular services, 10,000 additional cardiovascular patients could survive each year; and an additional 1,100 patients could be complication-free.

Patients at winning hospitals are 23 percent less likely than non-winners to have post-operative infections and about 20 percent less likely than non-winners to have post-operative hemorrhage for patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) or percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).

Winning hospitals annually perform as much as 80 percent more bypass surgeries and PCIs, including angioplasties, as their peers.

Cardiovascular patients at winning hospitals return to everyday life faster than those at non-winning hospitals. Patients at the winning hospitals were released more than a half-day earlier than patients at peer hospitals.